Tuesday Papers: RBS tips UK back into bonus debate

Top stories

Financial Times: British Chancellor George Osborne is braced for a new political backlash over bank bonuses, as state-controlled Royal Bank of Scotland prepares to pay as much as £250 million to staff at an investment banking division heavily implicated in the Libor-rigging scandal.

Financial Times: Almost €100 billion of private funds flowed back into the eurozone’s periphery late last year after action by the European Central Bank encouraged reinvestment in the crisis-hit countries.

The Guardian: The UK taxpayer will not be able to reclaim £2.3 billion in unhonoured deposit guarantees from the Icelandic government linked to online bank account Icesave, a court in Luxembourg has ruled.

The Daily Telegraph: France's labour minister sent the country into a state of shock on Monday after he described the nation as "totally bankrupt".

Financial Times: Japanese regulators said they found no evidence of shortcomings with manufacturing standards at lithium-ion battery factory of GS Yuasa, the battery supplier to the grounded Boeing 787 fleet, in Kyoto.

Financial Times: In the second quarter since Marissa Mayer took over as chief executive in July, Yahoo saw 4% growth in revenues to $1.2 billion; Yahoo beat earnings estimates by more than 14% in its fourth quarter.

The Guardian: Michael Clarke, the boss of Premier Foods, has quit the company after less than 18 months in the job, during which he collected more than £2.7 million.

Financial Times: Peter Beck’s Swift Trade must pay an £8 million fine for market abuse for moving share prices on the London Stock Exchange through rapidly placing and cancelling orders on thinly traded companies, a London tribunal has ruled.

Financial Times: Peter Beck’s Swift Trade must pay an £8 million fine for market abuse for moving share prices on the London Stock Exchange through rapidly placing and cancelling orders on thinly traded companies, a London tribunal has ruled.

The Independent: Nat Rothschild escalated his battle with Bumi's board on Monday, dismissing their plans for a radical shake-up of the Indonesian coal miner he co-founded – before they had even been announced.

Financial Times: Royal Dutch Shell has made its first move into plans to export liquefied natural gas from the US, joining a project planned by Kinder Morgan, the pipeline group, at Elba Island in Georgia.

Financial Times: Amazon.com is starting to make greater inroads into the advertising market as it seeks to disrupt the established digital marketing businesses of rivals such as Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft and AOL.

The Daily Telegraph: France's labour minister sent the country into a state of shock on Monday after he described the nation as "totally bankrupt".

Financial Times: Japanese regulators said they found no evidence of shortcomings with manufacturing standards at lithium-ion battery factory of GS Yuasa, the battery supplier to the grounded Boeing 787 fleet, in Kyoto.

The Guardian: Hilco, the restructuring specialist, has made millions by sucking up the assets of dying brands including Woolworths, Habitat and Borders.

The Guardian: The outgoing easyJet chairman, Sir Mike Rake, could still risk a battle with Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the founder of the airline, as he intends to stay in position until a successor is found.

Financial Times: The Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, the $160 billion Canadian pension fund, will increase its real estate allocation from C$30 billion to C$40 billion during the next 18 months.

The Daily Telegraph: Travelodge, the budget hotel chain, is to create 420 new jobs by opening 14 hotels across the UK and Spain this year.

Business and economics

Financial Times: Jesse Litvak, a former managing director in Jefferies’ Connecticut offices, has been charged with defrauding clients, including the US government and prominent hedge funds, of more than $2.7 million by inflating prices of mortgage securities to bolster the brokerage firm’s trading commissions.

The Daily Telegraph: Rupert Murdoch has offered a "major apology" for a "grotesque" cartoon in The Sunday Times, after the newspaper was accused of anti-Semitism.

Financial Times: Moody’s has cut the credit ratings of six of Canada’s biggest banks, including Royal Bank of Canada, Bank of Montreal, National Bank of Canada and TD Bank, because of worries over the country’s rising consumer debt and high house prices.

Financial Times: Net long positions on the euro reached their strongest level since the summer of 2011 last week, according to figures from the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission that are used as a proxy for hedge fund investors in the global currency market.

The Daily Telegraph: The performance of Marks & Spencer is under fresh scrutiny after it emerged that the retailer is missing internal sales targets by as much as 30% in China.

Financial Times: Commodities are unlikely to enjoy a return to the “buoyancy” of the past decade – when copper, aluminium and oil prices hit record highs – as China’s use of raw materials slows, Claude Dauphin, chief executive of Trafigura, has warned.

Financial Times: Seymour Pierce is approaching rivals about injecting money into or taking over the small-cap broker, people familiar with the discussions have said.

Financial Times: On Wednesday Research In Motion will finally launch its BlackBerry 10 operating system and two smartphones designed to run on it.

Daily Mail: Ryanair expects a 7% increase in profits to €540 million in the year to March despite a 19% rise in oil costs.

Financial Times: Toyota has reclaimed its position as the world’s largest carmaker for the first time in two years, selling a record 9.75 million vehicles globally in 2012 as Japan’s car industry rebounded strongly.

The Daily Telegraph: Italian coffee giant Lavazza is preparing to challenge the likes of Costa and Starbucks on the UK high street with ambitious plans to open as many as 400 shops over the next decade.

Financial Times: Barnes & Noble said that it would close up to 30% of its bricks-and-mortar stores over the next decade.

Financial Times: Fewer than 10% of FTSE 100 companies were expecting a material increase to bonus payouts as remuneration committees planned to exercise restraint at annual meetings over coming months, said the professional services firm PwC.

Financial Times: Shares of China Cosco Holdings dropped more than 5% on Monday after China’s largest shipping company warned late on Friday that it expects to make a loss of $1.7 billion when it releases full-year results in March.

The Daily Telegraph: Falklands oil and gas explorer Borders & Southern's shares jumped more than 10% on Monday morning after it increased estimates for Darwin discovery, and raised hopes the find could be technically and commercially viable.

Financial Times: Shares in Herbalife dropped as much as 11% in volatile trading on Monday as regulators said they were taking action against an illegal pyramid scheme that in fact involved a different company.

Financial Times: Sales in Filtronic’s wireless division more than doubled year-on-year to £11.9 million for the six months to 30 November because of widespread adoption of 4G services.

Share tips, comment and bids

The Independent: London Television Centre was bought by ITV on Monday for £56 million.

Financial Times: Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and the CME Group each considered bids for parts of NYSE Euronext shortly before it agreed to be sold to IntercontinentalExchange for $8.2 billion last year, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Guardian (Comment): In the past, a 25% fall in the pound would have turned the trade figures around – not this time.

The Guardian (Comment): The UK's looming triple-dip recession should be austerity's death knell, but in the fevered brains of Washington analysts it lives on.

The Daily Telegraph (Comment): One of the most refreshing things about going to the World Economic Forum in Davos is that it reminds you just how irrelevant to much of the rest of the world the political and economic concerns of Britain really are.

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